Nada

Trust

Namjoon prompted her when she stopped and lapsed into silence. She nodded, biting the inside of her cheek as memories she'd tried to forget flashed through her mind.

"Yeah, he changed. He started voicing the ideas I was against and arguing for them. When I would get upset he would turn it around on me and accuse me of putting words in his mouth and assuming the worst. It was really hurtful, I wondered why he couldn't understand how hurtful these ideas were to someone like me who was the gender he was saying should submit to him. Someone with my upbringing. The last couple months before I graduated were living hell. He suddenly turned on me and I was so confused. Everything was my fault. He knew me inside and out, I had always been insecure and relied on him for a lot of my self-worth. So he knew how to rip me apart. I thought I was a bad person....I was trying everything I could to fix things. Even though I disagreed, I loved him and felt I couldn't live without him." Y/N took in a shaky breath, willing herself to not cry. She had been so stupid.

"He ended things. But he still wanted to be friends." The boys all looked at her incredulously but she held up her hand. "I'll get to that. So we stayed friends and talked a lot. He may've known me well but I knew him too. And it honestly surprises me that he thought I wouldn't find out about the woman that triggered his attitude change towards him."

"He cheated." Hoseok was royally offended on Y/N's behalf and now wishing even more he'd beaten the snot out of Mordecai.

"Well....I'm pretty sure he waited to sleep with her till after he ended our engagement."

"It's still cheating." Jimin said softly.

"Yeah. I know. I graduated. I got out of there. I lost most of our friends. I haven't been excommunicated but I know everyone we both know is in his camp. I mean why wouldn't they be, I'm a woman. I did something wrong." She said sarcastically.

"How do you explain the wanting to stay friends?" Namjoon pressed. Y/N looked at him directly.

"I realized much later he was....well not a full-blown narcissist but definitely somewhere around there. He was the source of my security and I fed his ego. By keeping me around, especially when I was so broken, it would feed him. And if anything went wrong in his current relationship then he had a fallback."

"Why's he coming around now?" Taehyung was curious.

"Because they can't let people like me go. It destroys them to think that we can move on and they're not important to us anymore. I don't know what his specific trigger was. Maybe he finally realized marriage is hard. But....I knew it'd happen eventually. I just.....I didn't expect it to be like this, this crazy."

"Thank you for telling us. I know it was hard. But I hope you know that we do care about you. You're our friend. We'll help you." Y/N didn't say anything, just looked down at the ground. There was an exasperated sigh that rang through the room.

"Seriously though, Y/N. I fucking let you study on my patio whenever the hell you want. How could you think we're not friends?" Yoongi finally said something along the lines of what everyone was thinking and her head snapped up, her eyes suddenly flashing steel.

"Why would someone like me think a bunch of men who are self-admitted fuckboys seriously care about her? I'm sorry you're offended but..." She shrugged Hoseok's arm off her shoulders. "I view the world through a different lens than you." Her voice dropped at the end.

"We may be fuckboys. But we're your fuckboys." Jimin replied. "If you thought we were using you why did you even stick with us?" Y/N crossed her arms and huddled into herself.

"Because....sometimes even I get lonely. So I guess I was taking what I could get." Jimin was up before her words could fully sink in, wrapping his arms around her.

"Please don't think that way. We may be stupid and need to be yelled at a lot but we do care about you."

"And Hoseok really cares about you." Jungkook muttered under his breath, earning a glare from the man. To his relief, Y/N didn't seem to have heard.

Jin wrapped his broad arms around both Jimin and Y/N and a moment later was joined by Taehyung. Then the others.

"K, guys. She needs to breathe." Jimin finally said. They all pulled away and Y/N furiously wiped a few tears out of her eyes.  She felt overwhelmed and lucky.  She'd never dreamed of experiencing friendship like this.

"Thank you." She said quietly.

"Thank you for trusting us."